The War of The Worlds

Well let me start with the build up. The famous Orson Wells incident in the 30s or was it the 40s ? Directed by Steven Spielberg. Tom Cruise as the main Actor. Based on the famous novel by H.G. Wells. This movie had all the makings of a great movie. However, in the end, I think it was pretty ordinary. Not bad, but not very great either. The movie portrays the travails of a normal family in the midst of an alien invasion. There is no fancy gadgetry or military conferences or American presidents flying jets ( ala Independence Day ). It simply shows how a normal man would like to keep his family together. Where the top people get to go out in aircrafts and evacuate as fast as they can. Its left to the soldiers to monitor and take care of a mad mob of people trying to rush to safety. They fill ships beyond capacity and fight for cars and stuff like that. The movie begins by lightening strikes which transports the aliens into the ships hidden under the ground. The ships are huge and powerful and are capable of evaporating human beings into dust. Its up to Tom cruise to take his children to safety and keep them safe while doing so. Dakota Fanning has acted wonderfully, I would say even better than Tom Cruise himself. Well in a way the movie does promote itself as the travails of a normal family so there is no point in expecting much military talk. But even then since people are used to gadgetry for a long time, putting a few in may not have made it bad. Steven Spielberg does a good job in direction and the Fx in this movie are mind blowing and seem real. He has gone out of his way to get the reality of an alien invasion of the proportions he has depicted. In the end, as in the books, its not the humans but the planet that gets the invaders. The movie actually shows that we must look after the planet because it is looking after us. We have been around for only about ten thousand years, a speck in the history of the planet, which has been around for over billions of years. I liked what the movie stood for. Infact that weekend was nature approval weekend for me, I would out nature hiking and saw indeed how the plant and the forces to be are wonderful artists and I actually got to see them working. I guess that’s why I was one of the few to actually grasp, I am guessing, one of the true meaning of this movie and the book. I must point out that I have not read the book yet.

Cheers